Chasing Cupcakes: How One Broke, Fat Girl Transformed Her Life (and How You Can, Too)

by Elizabeth Benton

You won’t be fighting against yourself but rather working with yourself…creating an operating system of being militantly on your own side. It will serve as a guide to the joyful pursuit of your best self instead of a battle against your worst self.

Forget the intense, all-in, white-knuckle willpower lifestyle overhaul you’ve been considering or wrestling with. Let go of the worry about how you’ll stay on track next weekend. Instead, choose to be intentional about the progress you’re committing to each day.

You are always just a few great choices away from feeling better, building momentum, and creating the change you crave.

Often, we judge ourselves based on our intentions instead of holding ourselves accountable to our results. Because we’re thinking about what we want, because we have the desire to change and we plan to do so, we give ourselves credit for trying even when our efforts aren’t producing results.

Effort and progress are two very different things. They’re absolutely not interchangeable.

The majority of the time, we know more than enough to create change. Piling on more information is not the path to creating transformation. In fact, accumulating more information can be a barrier to change! We can know so much that we actually feel overwhelmed by all the options. I see a lot of people who are addicted to learning. What they need is a healthy dose of doing!

You can choose, today and every day, in your next moment and any moment, to practice living what you know and learning from doing instead of accumulating more information.

It’s not about how much you know. It’s about what you consistently do. It’s not about taking notes; it’s about taking action.

Let’s not deny or overlook the fact that there is a gap between your understanding that you can create change and the work it’s going to take to create it. In the gap lives the big, overwhelming question of “How?” In the gap lies doubt, rising from those past patterns we’re not giving our emotion to any longer.

“Every choice is a chance” instructs you to capitalize on each moment, not defer to the next.

Be open to the idea that there might be another perspective you’ve been missing. Be open to another version of your reality. Your familiar version of the truth isn’t the only version of the truth. Be open to the notion that you don’t have to keep revisiting the past.

I simply started to evaluate what choices made me unhappy. I asked myself questions like: When do I feel bad? What choices make me feel bad? How can I minimize those things today? What do I want to feel less of? What can I do about it today? The first rule of holes is “stop digging.” If you can identify what choices don’t give you what you want and what choices make you unhappy, that’s a powerful place to start. Ask yourself how you will avoid those things today.

That is precisely how you should tackle your own problems: creatively and energetically. After all, this is your life! Quite frankly, the problem keeping you from your best life or healthiest self is certainly more deserving of creative, energetic problem-solving than your cancelled flight, erroneous cable bill, or broken washing machine, right?

To create lasting change, the majority of your time and energy needs to be spent, creatively and energetically, in the solving stage. If you’re struggling to create change, take a look at where most of your time, energy, effort, and emotion are going. Chances are, it’s not in solving—it’s not in action.

Giving time to the problem isn’t the same as giving energy to the solution.

Mind the truth that moves you forward. Mind the truth that supports your goals. Mind the truth that creates the change you crave.

Don’t draw conclusions from illusions. Don’t believe everything you think and don’t believe everything you feel.

Drama stems from what we add to the facts.

Similarly, there’s no improvement that is too small to matter. There is no minimum threshold of time, effort, or impact that must be met for an action or thought to have value.

Now demands your best and simplicity is always available to you. There’s nothing about yesterday or tomorrow, earlier or later, that needs to factor into what you choose now and next.

Spectators are giving instructions to people in the game. Most of their communication is emotional. They blame and criticize the players—the people doing the work—while they do none. They are talking about what is happening but they aren’t doing anything about it. They can’t impact the outcome. Players, on the other hand, are involved. They’re in the moment. They are participating—they’re doing work instead of talking about it. They are focused on what can be done now. There’s no focus on yesterday or tomorrow. They’re making moves. They have the ability to impact the outcome, and that’s where their energy goes.

If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to?

Integrity is the state of being whole and undivided.

The feeling of FOMO waves a warning flag that you aren’t thinking in a whole and undivided way. You have one foot in your past and one in your future. You can’t live your best life when you’re divided.

“Self-esteem is just the reputation that you have with yourself.” —Naval Ravikant

When you repeatedly let yourself down, you sacrifice your self-esteem.

If your goal is to create lasting change in your life, you must use the dark and difficult moments to practice consistency. Don’t resent these moments. They are not here to give you an excuse to run from progress. The hard moments are an essential part of your process. Hard moments, hard days, and even hard years are part of the human experience. You can’t avoid them.

In your own life, never quit on a bad day. Never give up because you’re frustrated, tired, or stressed. Never give up because you aren’t seeing progress. Never.